You could always set up one of your bills to autopay thru the credit card and then pay it off every month. Not only will this help for reporting purposes, but it may help with future credit limit increases. I'm not a big spender so I just use my cards for my everyday purchases and bills and then pay them off. You can make a few dollars doing this too if any of your cards are rewards cards.
Credit scores have no memory. If you have high utiization for a month or two, your scores won't remember that in month 3 when you pay if back down/off. If you decide to do that, the benefit would also be that you have gotten the collections reporting $0 a little sooner so they will start aging sooner. Right now, they report as an updated negative every month and continue to hurt your score more than they would as a paid collection. Once you pay them and they update to $0 they will quit reporting every month. Are you going to attempt pay for deletes on any of them? If you can find email addresses for the collection agencies you may be able to do a PFD or even negotiate a lower payoff. Just make sure you do everything in writing so you have proof of any negotiated settlements!
@voxombmx wrote:Thank you, that may be a worth while direction, have to discuss that further with my wife.
I was able to get PFD on several of the other collections accounts, including one that was for $3200 which I paid in full. Unfortunatley these last 3 collections were reported as disputed and they did not agree to the PFD letters which is why these are the last 3 I have remaining unpaid. I will attempt to go the GW route after paying and hope for the best. Out of 9 initial collections accounts there are only these 3 reporting anymore and I have seen an average of 40pt growth in my scores since starting my rebuild last year.
That's really awesome! Good luck with the rebuild. It sounds like it's going great!